Writing the World from an African Metropolis

Mbembé, Achille; Nuttall, Sarah

doi:10.1215/08992363-16-3-347

Cited by 576 publications

(195 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…The urban condition is one lived in the midst of "multiple elsewheres" as Mbembe and Nuttall (2004) so elegantly described it for Johannesburg. What does this mean for methodologies of knowing the urban; what can it mean for conceptualising urbanisation?…”

Section: Topological "Connections"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy mobilities as comparison: urbanization processes, repeated instances, topologies

Robinson

2018

Rev. Adm. Pública

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Following on from calls to reformat comparative urban methods to support global urban studies, this paper draws inspiration from policy mobilities to explore how the genetic interconnectedness of urban processes and outcomes can be mobilised methodologically to critique and extend concepts in urban theory through comparison. What might be the scope and tactics for a practice of comparison through connections, which can start anywhere and build comparisons and analytical insights across a very great diversity of urban experiences? This paper explores three possible ways to take this forward. Firstly, tracing a specific connection, such as a policy link, from one context to another or across a number of different contexts contributes to understanding specific urbanization processes. Secondly, following connections brings into view the range and variety of processes and outcomes in different contexts. In the highly transnationalised world of urban policy this method potentially links a very wide variety of diverse urban contexts and draws attention to a multiplicity of repeated instances of urban forms. Finally, the paper considers the potential to work with the array of transnational processes shaping distinctive policy outcomes and development paths as they come together in one specific place -to explore how "elsewhere" is folded in to localised growth paths. Thus, comparative practices could follow policy mobilities to explore the potential of a more topological imagination of thinking across different contexts, and bringing a diversity of urban contexts into analytical conversation. Along these lines, the invention of concepts and understandings of the urban might emerge anywhere, and perhaps find wider relevance across different situations. Following the trajectories of policy mobilities is thus not only a pathway to inventing new methods but also potentially new grounds for theorizing the urban. Keywords: comparative urbanism; policy mobilities; repeated instances; topological space. Comparando a mobilidade das políticas públicas: processos de urbanização, instâncias repetidas e topologiasEm resposta à urgência por reformatar métodos urbanos comparativos que proporcionem embasamento para estudos urbanos globais, este artigo se inspira na mobilidade de políticas para explorar como a interconexão genética de processos e resultados urbanos pode ser mobilizada metodologicamente para criticar e estender conceitos na teoria urbana por meio da comparação. Quais poderiam ser o escopo e as táticas para uma prática de comparação por meio de conexões, que comecem onde quer que seja e que construam comparações e insights analíticos em uma grande diversidade de experiências urbanas? Este artigo explora três maneiras possíveis de levar isso adiante. Em primeiro lugar, o rastreamento de uma conexão específica, como um link de políticas, de um contexto para outro ou entre vários contextos diversos, contribuindo para a compreensão de processos específicos de urbanização. Em segundo lugar, as conexões seguintes colocam em evid...

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Section: Topological "Connections"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy mobilities as comparison: urbanization processes, repeated instances, topologies

Robinson

2018

Rev. Adm. Pública

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“…They have raised powerful challenges to the framing of Africa as 'a residual entity', asserting that studies from/on that continent do not merely contribute to knowledge of Africa, but to 'knowledge of the world' and 'of the human condition in general'. 51 In this vein, Thieme observed that her ethnography of young people in a Nairobi 'slum' provides opportunities to understand 'conditions of uncertainty for young people across geographies' (emphasis added) -for instance, those affected by austerity measures and precarious employment in the Minority World. 52 Meanwhile Myers articulated a series of 'thought experiments' that bypassed and reversed expected comparisons of cities in the Majority World with those in the Minority World, challenging the usual flow of intellectual authority.…”

Section: Countering Neocolonial Positionings Of Majority World Knowlementioning

confidence: 99%

“…When combining these perspectives it is possible to 'throw people off their routine readings and decipherings' 86 of marginalized lives and maligned materials. We have brought more-than-human and postcolonial theorizing together to two ends.…”

Section: Conclusion: Fluid Technologies For An Intractable World?mentioning

confidence: 99%

From troublesome materials to fluid technologies: making and playing with plastic-bag footballs

Klocker

Mbenna

Gibson

2017

cultural geographies

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The material recalcitrance of plastic bags -evident in their refusal to decompose and their capacity to evade neat disposal -is a widespread source of environmental concern and frustration. Yet throughout the Majority (developing) World, the incessant materiality of plastic affords boys and young men an opportunity to make footballs (soccer balls) out of waste. Made in situ, plasticbag footballs are uniquely suited to local contexts and landscapes -a resourceful technology assembled from otherwise troublesome materials. Plastic-bag footballs are also fluid: perpetually in-the-making and characterized by diverse states of working order. Insights garnered from discussions with young Tanzanian football-makers and players position plastic-bag footballs against neocolonial discourses of poverty and precarity. Meanwhile attentiveness to the socio-material relations of plastic-bag footballs makes plain that they are not inferior technologies. Plastic-bag footballs invite consideration of how humans live, materially, in the Anthropocene. Plastic bags typify the ecological crises of throwaway consumerism and malignant toxicity. Yet, we ask: could it be that plastic-bag footballs exemplify the material resourcefulness, skill, care for things -and even playfulness -needed to cope with these very crises?. AbstractThe material recalcitrance of plastic bags -evident in their refusal to decompose and their capacity to evade neat disposal -is a widespread source of environmental concern and frustration. Yet throughout the Majority (developing) World, the incessant materiality of plastic affords boys and young men an opportunity to make footballs (soccer balls) out of waste. Made in situ, plastic-bag footballs are uniquely suited to local contexts and landscapes -a resourceful technology assembled from otherwise troublesome materials. Plastic-bag footballs are also fluid: perpetually in-the-making and characterized by diverse states of working order. Insights garnered from discussions with young Tanzanian football-makers and players position plasticbag footballs against neocolonial discourses of poverty and precarity. Meanwhile attentiveness to the socio-material relations of plastic-bag footballs makes plain that they are not inferior technologies. Plastic-bag footballs invite consideration of how humans live, materially, in the Anthropocene. Plastic bags typify the ecological crises of throwaway consumerism and malignant toxicity. Yet, we ask: could it be that plastic-bag footballs exemplify the material resourcefulness, skill, care for things -and even playfulness -needed to cope with these very crises?

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“…As such, they do little to elucidate the nature of migration or migrants but do hide many things. These include the growth of diasporic communities; the 'multiple elsewhere' (Mbembe and Nuttall, 2004; also Levitt, 2001) that drive refugee and migrant imaginations, and other socio-economic and political processes that drive movements and shape responses to them.…”

Section: Geographic Scope and Scalementioning

confidence: 99%

International Migration Report 2015 - Highlights

2015

Statistical Papers - United Nations (Ser. A), Population and Vital Statistics Report

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Writing the World from an African Metropolis

Cited by 576 publications

References 53 publications

Policy mobilities as comparison: urbanization processes, repeated instances, topologies

Policy mobilities as comparison: urbanization processes, repeated instances, topologies

From troublesome materials to fluid technologies: making and playing with plastic-bag footballs

International Migration Report 2015 - Highlights

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